Spain’s Europa Press news agency reports that Venezuela purchased “biological and
nerve agents” as well as dual-use materials from Spain sometime
during the first half of 2004. According to a report about defense
expenditures obtained by Europa Press, Venezuela was the only
country listed under the category of “states to which chemical
warfare agents and radioactive materials were sold.” An English
translation appears here.
The accusation comes in the wake of Spain’s announcement that it
will sell conventional weaponry — military transport planes and
and patrol boats — to Venezuela. I found the story through Iberian
blogger Barcepundit, who notes that “If Rumsfeld was reportedly
angry about the sale of planes and boats, boy I
can only imagine what he’ll think about this.”
The amount of biological or nerve agents probably isn’t large —
Europa Press sets the purchase price at 30,000 Euros, which isn’t
out of line with the price of a single kilogram of South American
heroin. I’m not familiar with the going rates on
the WMD black market, but hopefully doomsday weapons are scarcer
and therefore more expensive than heroin. (A further 1.6 million
Euros was spent on the dual-use materials which might be
legitimately destined for the petroleum and leather-tanning
industries.) But any amount of WMD in the hands of the Castroite
Chavez regime is too much.
President Chavez may be a thuggish autocrat, but he isn’t stupid
enough to use chemical or biological weapons against American
civilians, at least directly. He may see them as insurance against
the possibility of an American invasion; however, the United States
demonstrated in Iraq that threats of chemical retaliation will not
deter us should we decide to invade.
A more likely scenario is the use of these WMD’s for
international extortion against South American governments.
Chavez’s alleged links to Colombia’s narcoterrorist FARC and to Evo Morales’s cocaleros in Bolivia suggest he could find
a vector for the weapons should he need one. The implicit threat of
arming insurgent groups with WMD’s may compel these governments —
especially the precarious democracy in Bolivia — to accommodate
Venezuela’s policies or to reject ours.
Interestingly, Spain and Venezuela have both ratified the
Chemical Weapons Convention, Article I of which
requires that:
Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never
under any circumstances:
(a) To develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain
chemical weapons, or transfer, directly or indirectly, chemical
weapons to anyone;
(b) To use chemical weapons;
(c) To engage in any military preparations to use chemical
weapons;
(d) To assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in
any activity prohibited to a State Party under this
Convention.
Taken slightly more seriously than the CWC, however, is the
Monroe Doctrine — the longstanding U.S. policy
that Europe messes around in the Americas at its own peril. Spain
was reminded of this rule quite forcefully in 1898, in a war that
ended in its greatest defeat since 1588. The last time a foreign
power tried to set up WMD’s in a Latin American country, President
Kennedy blockaded the country, confronted the Soviet ships, and
nearly provoked nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
On April 21 the Latin American and Caribbean branch of the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will meet in Cartagena to discuss the ongoing
implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. At the top of
the agenda should be Venezuela’s apparent contempt for its
obligations under the Convention.
Meanwhile the United States should demand some answers from
Spain. Most importantly, is this information accurate, or has
Europa Press just published the Spanish equivalent of the
Rathergate memos? These
allegations are sufficiently disturbing that Europa Press needs to
publish the entire leaked report, and submit it to the world’s
scrutiny
Assuming the story is accurate: President Luis Zapatero was
elected in the aftermath of the 3-11 Madrid bombing. The Europa
Press source dates the sales to Venezuela from the first half of
2004, meaning it could have been either the Socialist Zapatero or
his pro-American predecessor Jose Maria Aznar who arranged the
sale. Which administration is responsible? My first guess is that
since Zapatero hasn’t taken the opportunity to decry his
opposition’s perfidious practice of selling weapons to rogue
dictators, he may end up with tapas on his face.
More important than who sold the weapons is how much they sold,
whether delivery has been completed, whether the sales were only
for that quarter or they have been ongoing, and whether the exports
were limited to Venezuela. If Spain is not forthcoming with answers
about its WMD sales, Americans should consider a boycott of Rioja.
And the U.S. should ultimately consider designating both Venezuela
and Spain “states of proliferation concern” under the Proliferation Security Initiative, encouraging the
interdiction and search of Spanish ships just as we do with North
Korean vessels suspected of carrying illegal weapons.
If this threat is real, the Bush administration must react
strongly to make certain that WMD’s aren’t finding their way into
the Americas. Our intelligence services need to figure out what
Chavez is doing with these weapons. And our diplomatic service
needs to make it brutally clear to Spain that we will not tolerate
further arming of Chavez’s regime. As Admiral Dewey might have
said, you may fire when ready, Condi.
